Sick days are no fun…

October 28, 2010, 8:03 PM

Ecch… I hate taking sick days. This was the first sick day I’ve taken since 2006. But when I call out sick, I mean it. Talk about an awful time. I tossed and turned the entire night last night, with TBD (formerly News Channel 8) on the TV. And I had a fever the whole time. And I had a major case of nasal congestion and got to know exactly what sinus pressure was all about. I felt like my nose was going to explode, what with all of everything clogged up and in pain. And blowing my nose didn’t do much good. No relief. Just more of the face-wants-to-explode feeling.

And let me be the first to tell you that all-natural nasal sprays are overpriced and ineffective. I bought this all-natural nasal spray from Whole Foods yesterday that was made of saline, glycerin, and – get this – grapefruit seed extract. Lovely. So now the snot smells vaguely like grapefruit, but it’s still there. I went with the all-natural stuff because of the usual concerns about the rebound effect on conventional nasal sprays. However, unlike the natural stuff, the conventional one worked like a charm. When I finally said the hell with the natural spray, I hit my bottle of regular spray, and I could breathe again.

Then you know you’re sick when you call the office to relay some information and they can’t tell who you are by voice. Usually, I’m fairly easily recognized by voice. Not this time. I called twice to attend to various things, and two people each couldn’t tell who I was.

Now, though, I believe that the worst is over. The fever has gone away, the sinus pressure has gone away, and I’m left with just a headache from all the sniffling. Thus tomorrow, I’ll be back at work – which is where I’d rather have been today than sick at home. After all, I had stuff to do, and now I’m a day behind where I want to be. If I had known I was going to be out sick, I would have brought stuff home to do and at least try to be somewhat productive on a day I didn’t want to be at home in the first place. Instead, I was caught kind of off-guard, and ended up being bored all day. No fun.

On the plus side, though, tomorrow is the day we’re all dressing up for halloween, and thus I can dress totally down. Seriously – I had decided a few days ago that I was going to go as my weekend self, and so for that, I was going to wear my camo pajama pants, a shirt I don’t normally wear during the week, and not shave. Due to the sick day, the look might be enhanced – now I’ll have two-day stubble.

Otherwise, going away from the subject of sick days, I have a couple of photos that I want to share with you. First, a follow-up on something I discussed two weeks ago. Goodbye, bus stop:

They dug up the sidewalk that they put in around 2008, having replaced it with a new sidewalk near the new traffic calming island, and grassed it over. It kinda looks like they buried someone right there, doesn’t it?

Otherwise, they recently finished remodeling the Whole Foods store on P Street in DC, which included constructing a mezzanine level out of previously unused space. The store looks different, and if I didn’t know better, I would think it always looked like this. Compare to some other stores where, when they get remodeled, you can tell that the store was not originally designed to look the way it does, and that the new design is being shoe-horned into the old building. This actually looks like it belongs. When they opened the new mezzanine area, I got a photo of the store from up there:

Kinda cool, no? This mezzanine area is the new home for all the seating that used to be along the store’s front windows, which got evicted for a new row of express checkout registers. Meanwhile, yesterday when I went, they had some of the stairs to the mezzanine blocked off for some work, presumably on the flooring. The way the stairs are set up, you go up to a landing slightly higher than the mezzanine, and then back down to reach the mezzanine. It’s one of the only places that gives away that the mezzanine is not original. The blocked-off section meant that the only way on and off of the mezzanine was via the elevator. However, I saw the blocked-off stairs, and Dangeresque came to mind. I mentioned this to a few HRC canvassers that were also waiting for the elevator, and I said, in my best Strong Bad voice, “So I’m gonna have to jump!”

And lastly, I was at Best Buy in Wheaton last week returning one of the netbook sleeves that I bought that didn’t work out, and discovered Google TV while I was there. I could definitely use one of these things, but the price tag will keep it in the store. But this has great potential. If I weren’t dressed somewhat casually, this photo could be a great PR moment for Schumin Web:

Yes, it’s me posing with Schumin Web on a big flat-screen Google TV. Oh, yeah. Schumin next to Schumin Web. Like I said, I want one of these things, but I’m not dropping the amount of money necessary to put one of these things in my living room. At least not now.